As a teenager,[5] she and her siblings converted toCatholicism, following the conversions of their parents.[2][6] Her "maternal grandparents wereUnitarians – a non-conformist faith with a strong emphasis on social reform". In response to criticism of her writing aboutOliver Cromwell, she has said, "I have no Catholic blood". Before his own conversion in his thirties following a nervous breakdown in the Army, as she explains: "My father wasProtestant Church of Ireland, and my mother was Unitarian up to the age of 20 when she abandoned it."[5]
Fraser's first major work wasMary, Queen of Scots (1969), published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, which was followed by several other biographies, includingCromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973).[4][12]
Fraser acknowledges she is "less interested in ideas than in 'the people who led nations' and so on. I don't think I could ever have written a history of political thought or anything like that. I'd have to come at it another way."[13] Fraser's study,The Warrior Queens (1989), is an account of military royal women since the days ofBoadicea andCleopatra. In 1992, a year afterAlison Weir's bookThe Six Wives of Henry VIII, she published a book with the same title.
She chronicled the life and times ofCharles II in a well-reviewed 1979 eponymous biography.[12] The book was cited as an influence on the 2003BBC/A&E mini-series,Charles II: The Power & the Passion, in a featurette on the DVD, byRufus Sewell who played the title character.[14] Fraser served as editor for many monarchical biographies, including those featured in theKings and Queens of England andRoyal History of England series, and, in 1996, she also published a book entitledTheGunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, which won both theSt. Louis Literary Award and theCrime Writers' Association (CWA) Non-FictionGold Dagger.[12][15]
Fraser has writtendetective novels, the most popular a series of ten written between 1977 and 1995 and involving a female television personality and detective namedJemima Shore; the latter were adapted into the television seriesJemima Shore Investigates, which aired in the UK in 1983.[8] Early publications included volumes on dolls and toys. Her first book was a volume about King Arthur, one edition of which was illustrated by her eldest daughter; it was written for a series forMarks and Spencer, as was a later volume about Robin Hood.[18]
From 1988 to 1989, Fraser was president of EnglishPEN, and she chaired its Writers in Prison Committee.[19]
From 1983 to 1984, she was president ofEdinburgh'sSir Walter Scott Club.[20] She serves as a judge for the Enid McLeod Literary Prize, awarded by the Franco-British Society, previously winning that prize for her biographyMarie Antoinette (2001).[21][22]
Fraser's first memoirMust You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter was published in January 2010 and she read a shortened version as BBC Radio Four'sBook of the Week that month.[17] Her second memoir,My History. A Memoir of Growing Up was published a few years later.
On 22 October 1975, Hugh and Antonia Fraser, together withCaroline Kennedy, who was visiting them at theirHolland Park home, inKensington, westLondon, were almost blown up by anIRA car bomb placed under the wheels of his Jaguar, which had been triggered to go off at 9 am when he left the house; the bomb exploded, killing thecancer researcherGordon Hamilton Fairley. Fairley, a neighbour of the Frasers, had been walking his dog, when he noticed something amiss and stopped to examine the bomb.[5][25][26][27]
In 1975, she began an affair with playwrightHarold Pinter, who was then married to the actressVivien Merchant.[2][8] In 1977, after she had been living with Pinter for two years, the Frasers' union was legally dissolved.[2][8] Merchant spoke about her distress publicly to the press, which quoted her cutting remarks about her rival, but she resisted divorcing Pinter.[2][8] In 1980, after Merchant signed divorce papers, Fraser and Pinter married[2][5][8]in the Roman Catholic Church.[28] Harold Pinter died from cancer on 24 December 2008, aged 78.[4]
Lady Antonia Fraser's uncatalogued papers (relating to her "Early Writing", "Fiction", and "Non-Fiction") are on loan at theBritish Library.[32] Papers by and relating to Lady Antonia Fraser are also catalogued as part of the Harold Pinter Archive, which is part of its permanent collection of Additional Manuscripts.
^Daniel Snowman,"Lady Antonia Fraser",History Today 50.10 (October 2000): pp. 26–28,History Today, n.d., 8 April 2009 (excerpt; full article available to subscribers or pay-per-view customers).
^ab"Antonia Fraser to tell Harold Pinter 'love story'. Historical biographer will publish her 'portrait of a marriage' to the Nobel laureate in January 2010",The Guardian, 9 June 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2009. [There is a factual error in this account; the Pinter-Merchant marriage was not dissolved in 1977, as stated, but in 1980, shortly before Pinter and Fraser married; Merchant's delay in signing the divorce papers resulted in the reception (scheduled for Pinter's 50th birthday on 10 October 1980) being held before the wedding, which occurred two weeks later, according toMichael Billington's authorised biography of Pinter (Harold Pinter, pp. 271–72). It was the Frasers' marital union that was dissolved in 1977.]
^Must You Go?Archived 21 November 2010 at theWayback Machine, Shortlist for Non-Fiction Book of The Year award category (Book 5), Galaxy National Book Awards, 2010. Retrieved 6 December 2010.
